Officials at Perdue Inc. are trying to figure out why a tanker truck leaked 3,000 gallons of slippery, foul-smelling chicken fat yesterday over a 20-mile stretch of U.S. 13 on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

Four wrecks were reported, including a four-car crash in which one car sheared off a power pole and several people were taken to a local hospital with minor injuries, said state trooper Steven Kulick. He said several other drivers slid or spun out but managed to recover without crashing.

The truck driver evidently failed to secure a valve on the tanker and then did not notice in the pre-dawn darkness that "he was spilling this stuff all over creation," Bunting said. He described the chicken fat as rust-colored, with the consistency of cooking oil and the smell of chicken left far too long in the fridge.

Julie DeYoung, a Perdue spokeswoman in Salisbury, Md., said the company was still investigating how the leak occurred. She said Perdue has hired contractors to sweep and vacuum up the sand. She said no one at the company could recall such an incident in at least 30 years.

But Kulick said he remembered an incident a year ago when a truck full of chicken guts overturned and released its contents onto U.S. 13, closing the highway for 18 hours.

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